The Farahi school (Urdu: فراہی مکتبہ فکر) is a school of thought that originated in the Indian subcontinent, named and established by Hamiduddin Farahi, a cousin and student of the Indian Sunni Hanafi scholar Shibli Nomani. Unlike other schools of thought, which focus more on the practise Taqlid, the Farahi school puts greater emphasis on the self-source of reasoning (Ijtihad) of the individual, seeking to tackle modern issues within a paradigm based on reason and revelation.[1]
Hamiduddin Farahi was born during the times of British Raj. A cousin of the famed theologian and historian Shibli Nomani, from whom he learned Arabic. After finishing his studies, He taught in many religious schools, including, Sindh Madressatul Islam University, Karachi, (from 1897 to 1906),[2] Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College (MAO) and Darul Uloom, Hyderabad. During his stay in Hyderabad, Farahi proposed the idea of establishing a university, in which all religious and modern sciences would be taught in Urdu. He subsequently travelled to 'Sara-e-Mir', a town in Azamgarh, where he took charge of the Madrasatul Islah, an institution which was based on the educational ideas of Shibli Nomani and Farahi, The Islamic scholar Amin Ahsan Islahi (who later immigrated to Pakistan), was one of them.[3] Islahi greatly influenced another prominent scholar of the era, Javed Ahmad Ghamidi.[4]
The main focus of the Farahi School is built on a contextualised understanding of the Qurʾān, the study of all other aspects of the faith, such as the Hadith tradition is based on a constant reference to the Qurʾān. It is this unwavering centrality given to the Qurʾān that has enabled the school to produce academically and intellectually profound research in a consistent manner. Thus, by making the Qurʾān its sole yardstick, this school has been able to engage with modern-day scholarship on a variety of issues relating to Islamic history. The Farahi school however denies every allegation of Quranism, stating that it merely prioritises the Qurʾān over other all sources of jurisprudence and theology, seeking to return to a pre-Shafi'i understanding of the faith, wherein the emphasis was more so on the Qurʾān and other sources of law, such as legal reasoning, regional customs and the Sunnah. Al-Shafiʿi on the other hand forcefully argued for the Qurʾān “to be interpreted in the light of traditions (i.e. Hadith), and not vice versa.” al-Shafiʿi's success was such that later writers “hardly ever thought of Sunnah as comprising anything but that of the Prophet.”[5] In contrast to the approach outlined by al-Shafiʿi, the Farahi school seeks to return to precisely that understanding that predominated throughout the Muslim world prior to the rise of al-Shafiʿi. In this respect, the school is similar to the approach of the early Ḥanafī school of jurisprudence prior to the surrender of the school to the principles outlined by al-Shafiʿi. The founder of what is now the largest school within Sunni Islam, Abu Hanifa, “turned to the Qur'an, those Hadiths he knew for sure to be reliable, the teachings of the Companions who had settled in Kufa and then his own reason. For him, the Qur'an was the anchor of any true understanding of God's will. Unlike the flurry of spurious Hadiths.”[6] This approach soon led to condemnation and charges of heresy from the post-Shafi'i partisans of Ḥadīth, who were dismayed with Abu Hanifa's preference of legal reasoning over Hadith.[7]
The school thus seeks to emulate this pre-Shafi understanding of Islam, not rejecting authoritative sources, but reinterpreting their authority in a manner the school deems to be in line with the understanding of jurists from the earliest generations of Islam, asserting that this is the proper understanding of the faith based off the most authoritative source, the Qurʾān. The school likewise does not shy away from putting canonised sources, such as Bukhari and Muslim under careful scrutiny.[8] This major principle of the Farahi School is embodied by the strict emphasis on the fact that the Ḥadīth tradition must always be studied in light of the Qurʾān. In this manner, the Farahi school alleges that most of the differences in opinion amongst jurists arise due to a misapplication of the Ḥadīth, whereby the Ḥadīth tradition is not understood in light of the Qurʾān but used to understand the Qurʾān. An example of this presented by the school is the issue of drawn images, the Qurʾān nowhere mentions their prohibition, on the contrary, the Qurʾān makes mention of their existence at the court of Solomon.[9] The Ḥadīth tradition does however mention the prohibition of images.[10] If this report is contextualised in light of the Qurʾān and historical circumstances of the prophetic era, the attentive reader will conclude that this particular prohibition was aimed at pictures that were utilised for worship by idolaters. Dr. Javad Ahmad Ghamidi illustrates this hermeneutical principle.
“… All things presented as parts of the faith shall be accepted and rejected in light of the Qurʾān. All of the arguments on faith and belief must start and end on it. All other claims of revelations, inspirations, research and or opinion must be tested against the Qurʾān. It must be accepted that the authority of the Qurʾān reigns over Abu Hanifa or Shafi’i, Bukhari or Muslim, Ashari or Maturidi and Juaniad or Shibli alike. Anything that contradicts it shall not and cannot be accepted.”[11]
The Farahi school considers the only thing that is identifiable as Sunnah to be that which is religious by nature, in outlining this, Dr. Ghamidi puts it into perspective that the Prophet Muhammad did many things customary of Arab society. Though none of it can be termed to be Sunnah. In contrast, the school alleges that the Prophet Muhammad was entirely fallible in wordly matters, pointing to several narrations in the canonical collections in order to reinforce this point.[12] Consequently, the source of the Sunnah is the consensus of the Muslim community.[13] This understanding is not innovative, but reflects an earlier, more ancient understanding of the Sunnah. Daniel W. Brown writes that “to many early Muslims, by contrast, the Sunna and ḥadīth remained conceptually independent, and the two concepts did not fully coalesce until after al-Shafiʿi. We especially notice a dissociation between ḥadīth and Sunna in early historical reports, where Sunna is often used generically signifying nothing more than acceptable social norms or custom.” Thus, the call echoed by various groups calling for a return to the “Book of God and the Sunnah of the Prophet” was a call to a set of principles used to establish justice. That this was the earliest Muslim understanding of the Sunna is confirmed by various epistles and tracts written during the 8th century.[14]
The Farahi school holds a specific set of doctrines as authoritative, these fundamentals are derived from a specific understanding of the Qur’ān and Sunnah, they have been further expounded upon through various means within the school.
The Farahi school of Islamic theology holds to the following religious principles:[15]
The question of the coherence of the surahs has long been a topic of contention, until recently Western Islamic studies have by and large considered the Qurʾān to be largely thematically incoherent. Dr. Joseph Witztum writes that “In fact, until the last thirty years or so Western scholarship followed in the footsteps of the classical exegetical tradition in approaching the verses of the Quran in an atomistic manner.” The western field of Qurʾānic studies however changed in the late nineties, wherein a newer approach to the Qurʾān came to be developed, one described as “one of the major breakthroughs of modern scholarship.” This newer approach, described as the “organic-holistic” approach considers the surah as a coherent literary whole. This approach was first pioneered by the founder of the Farahi school, Hamiduddin Farahi, who initiated a far-reaching trend still upheld by the school. He has been followed on this by a variety of scholars, such as Angelika Neuwirth, Michael Cuypers, Irfan Shahid, Pierre Crapon de Caprona, Raymond Farrin, Neal Robinson, and others.[16] [17] [18]